The Houston Library and Exhibition Complex designed by MA2 is the second installment in the initiation of dynamic architectural proposals for Houston, Texas and the greater development of ideas for American cities. The design functions along multiple trajectories of display corridors and library storage to interpolate exhibition with an expanded book collection for international reading and research. By having a series of harmonic manifolds of book collection space and the mixing of programmatic function for exhibition, it generates a dynamical system of flowing conditions which manifests with moments of extrapolation within the tectonic massing and circulation. Within the radiating tectonic corridors there is also included smaller botanical gardens which resonates with the surrounding landscape development as well, serving the community with a robust flower display and plaza.

The site sits along the axis of Hardy and Burnett St. just north of the downtown center. A vacant -underdeveloped lot and community that is need of an influx injection regarding an economic stimulus in the form of icon urban dynamism. The library – exhibition hall with park and botanical landscaping can transform the area into a destination point within Houston for cultural exchange, civic activities, and research. With a robust architectural formal aesthetic for the complex, it anticipates a world class book collection for both the arts and sciences, also expanding its collection with international publications.

The architectural tectonics shift, bundle, radiate, and project upward in flight to create nodes of complexity in the form of tessellated metallic shells with varied glass façades. This strategy transforms the internal poly-function into a stealth metallic body which carries a meaning signature of a craft of departure, which manifests its conceptual synthesis. It also includes a series of green roofs, led walls, and a labyrinth for digital projections. The total development for the concept proposal is 9,000 m2. Read the rest of this entry »

To mark the city’s 375th anniversary in 2017, the Borough of Ville-Marie will offer Montréal residents and visitors a revamped, friendlier Place Jacques-Cartier that will host lively activities year round. The borough hopes to enhance the quality of this public space and flaunt the rich heritage of this emblematic site, a prime social gathering place between the Old Port and the Cité administrative, dominated by City Hall.

“We want to make Place Jacques-Cartier a must-see focal point of Vieux-Montréal for Montrealers and visitors alike,” says Montréal Mayor Denis Coderre. “Its design, occupancy and activity program should highlight the site’s historical character.”

Enhancing the architectural heritage

To revitalize the ambiance at Place Jacques-Cartier and facilitate events throughout the year, of building façades will be made more visible, to show them off, and flaunt the architectural diversity of the site. Currently, these façades are masked by awnings and terrasses (patios) used only during part of the year. The terrasses will be moved to the centre of the square. Merchants, artists and visitors can enjoy new furniture (terrasses, kiosks and benches).

To protect customers from the sun and the elements, patios will be surrounded by glass walls and will feature a roof with a retractable awning. Linked to the power grid, these installations will be well lit and heated as required. The new structure also sets the stage for winter events such as a Christmas walk, after the patio season is over.

“Place Jacques-Cartier has not had a makeover since 1998. All of these improvements will re-burnish the site by giving it the aesthetic coherence that it lacks today,” says Richard Bergeron, counsellor of the St-Jacques district and executive committee member responsible for development of the downtown core. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dodecaplex Space Ecosystem is a project conceived to solve the current needs for space exploration, focusing on: avoiding dependency on Earth’s resources, adaptation to new technologies, and maintaining life. The Spacecraft will act as a future place of residence and method of transportation to other planetary systems.

Applying membranes as functional units, separating spaces, protecting the Station from the exterior, we will maintain life.Using biological processes such as photosynthesis, essential for cell life, to produce oxygen for human life, we generate the capacity to sustain a whole organism, or in this case, a whole station. Capable of adaptation, as a modular installation in expansion and continuous evolution, the Station would welcome additions as a result of new scientific discoveries and technologies.

The Trançado project is an urban furniture located at Largo da Batata, São Paulo, Brazil, selected by Batatalab competition held by the Instituto A Cidade Precisa de Você (The City Needs You Institute) and IPIU Instituto de Pesquisa e Inovação em Urbanismo (Institute of Urbanism Research and Innovation).

The first premise of the proposal is the competition theme “Shadow,” which initially refers to a closed cover. However, factors such as visual contact with the surroundings and the wind incidence on site, incited a project that also contemplated permeability. Another important aspect was the visual experience for citizens and reflection on how to achieve a compelling aesthetic that could offer interesting patterns of shadow. All these parameters should be aligned to the budget available.

During the design and building process, digital resources were employed for evaluating the performance of materials, structural strength, visual permeability, sensory experience and pedestrian flow, combined with parameters of sunlight incidence and shadow in order to ensure the most efficient weaved for this project.

Due to the geometric complexity of weave, code data were extracted and generated sequence to weave string; it rationalized the process, making it simpler.

It is hoped that the people at the Largo da Batata, Sao Paulo, Brazil, find comfort and sensory pleasure to transit or stay. The Trançado furniture is an interface for what truly matters: the occupation of public space, encounters, and living spaces. Read the rest of this entry »

Outline
What constitutes a museum today in the 21st century? Exactly this question forms the base to all accompanying questions within the AA Visiting School Program in Frankfurt/Rhein Main. The supreme discipline for an architect, a cultural building, will not be thought as a formalistic exercise, but rather as a neo-political question, a sociological development and territorial connection; allowing the design to form the answers.

Brief
Today’s central European landscape can be defined as a multiple image of a fragmented space with little dynamics within its territorial elements. A clear division towards the Hinterland is taking place resulting in a cultural split with the metropolitan space.

With a focus on the Rhein-Main area, its´ central power-house Frankfurt and the surrounding uplands, we aim at identifying, conceptualizing and realizing cross territorial supply chains to develop the Peripheral Museum of Contemporary Art. The museum exemplifies a cultural network through architectural interventions, which will redefine territorial strategies connecting the metropolitan with the Hinterland and vice versa; to broaden an exchange beyond political and economical boundaries.

Each year will focus on a different landscape and thematic strategy, developing various respective scenarios. Thereby, a unified policy with different levels of intensifications, new relations and negotiations within the territories and across the metropolitan space will be formed – the peripheral museum of contemporary art // PMCA.

While Last year visions for the Spessart have been thought through, 2016 will focus on the “Flughafen Wald“, an inner buffer zone.

This is a proposal for the new Barack Obama Presidential Library located at Jackson Park in Chicago, Illinois. Chicago is a city that is heavily defined by grid and frame, giving birth to the commonly known term of the “Chicago School” or “Chicago Frame.” Our proposal utilizes this existing architectural language of the context as a starting point to define a new speculative architectural language for the city of Chicago.

Our project addresses the dichotomy between two independent and highly incongruous architectural problems – the monolith and the frame. As frame meets monolith and monolith meets frame, a symbiotic interdependency is produced where the final form does not rely exclusively on one system. Instead, it relies on a unique equilibrium between monolith and frame. The monolith can be perceived as a solid, legible, and even an icon, yet the logic of its generation is rationalized by the basis of the frame as an extensive system. However, this is not achieved by the mere assimilation of these dichotomies but through the slippage of frame and mass to generate a misregistration of the whole. Read the rest of this entry »

The foundational core of this project designed by Zack Matthews at the Harvard GSD focuses on the effect which digital technology has had on tourism and its repercussions on physical attractions such as the Castle of St. Jorge – the historical castle located in Lisbon Portugal, where this project takes place.

Digital technology has not only provided distractions to disengage visitors of the castle, but it has also provided windows of accessibility where users can tour castles, museums, and collections from their own bedroom. As much of the allure of the programming and collections in the castle is a result of the atmosphere of the castle itself, the effect of the attraction is inevitably lost if only experienced through an iPhone, tablet, or laptop.

To address this problem and persuade people to actually experience the atmosphere of the historical pinnacle within Lisbon, this project begins to perform in two ways. It serves first as funicular – a novel and practical way to traverse the intense landscape of Lisbon as well as the approach to the castle.

Secondly, by using the inherent mechanical properties of the funicular – movement, velocity, and sound – perceptions of visitors using the alternate funicular wrapped stair, are stimulated and engaged. Additionally, both of these paths are located below ground in an immersive cavity which burrows from the street to the castle plateau above. By first engaging user perceptions and interactions between the two systems of travel, and then immersing those engagements underground, a more encompassing atmosphere is created which celebrates and heightens the event of traveling to the castle.

Ultimately by stimulating user perceptions and providing attraction to get to the castle, this project addresses the two identified problems of digital technology in tourism mentioned above. It perceptually, physically, and socially engages visitors enough to temporarily cure their digital distractions. It also creates an incentive to visit the castle and experience its physical qualities and qualitative atmospheres. Read the rest of this entry »

The proposal for a New MASP in São Paulo, a project made by Oscar Abrahamsson at Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc) is suggesting a new home for Museu de Arte de São Paulo in Brazil. It is an exploration in explicit shape, décor and adornment and new ideas of the urban ground in creating a museum that lowers the threshold between culture and life in the street.

The modern project and the universal cities it produced, utopian in their nature, has imposed an alienating effect upon us. The result of modernism is cities where we don’t feel like home. The New MASP is trying to find ways of re-introducing this sense of belonging into the city by creating new models of urban life, while dwelling within the context of urban fragmentation in the megapolis of São Paulo.

Two simple triangular shapes constitute the building volume – forming new, elevated, grounds – habitable sloped planes that are displacing the urban ground onto the top of the building. Massive, opaque and black, the figure of the building merges in its muteness with the ground. No apertures are present to confuse the simple volumes. Natural light still pours in through the massive skylights established by the “color dips” on the top of each of the triangular shapes. The “color dips”, glazed but highly reflective, are introducing new datums that are further shifting the perception of the ground through acting as fake horizons. Read the rest of this entry »

The animal rights activism art-based education facility, Museum of Compassion designed by ANX/Aaron Neubert Architects will be located in Louisville, Kentucky. An interstitial space that is bounded by park amenities such as tennis courts, hiking trails, nature preserve on the north; single family residential development on the east and west; and a zoo on the south side serves as the project site.

The architecture consists of a rectangular steel frame pavilion within a park setting – altered by five pro¬grammatic impressions. These impressions consist of the Lobby, the Conference Room, the Art Studio, the Visiting Gallery, and the Administration Offices each engaging the exterior landscape, as well as altering the contiguous space of the exhibition hall. The perimeter spaces are clad in reclaimed local wood, while the exhibition hall provides an immersive and ephemeral experience through the deployment of envelop¬ing translucent roof monitors. The perforated steel exterior cladding evokes local industrial archetypes, yet presents a soft and translucent object resting on the landscape.

Our design for the 2016 Arch Triumph Energy Pavilion creates a dynamic focal point to the gardens and showcases energy-generation achieved through piezoelectricity, which converts pressure into an electric charge. The structure is shaped to echo the outline of the Museum Gardens site. The points of the diamond shape are oriented toward the main entrances to the park, and the diagonal divisioning of the panels draws visitors in and around the structure, which is configured as a torus. The curving panelized wall angles up to reveal an interior space lined in brightly colored metal panels. Visitors are encouraged to touch the pavilion to generate pressure-generated energy. Pushing on the panels of the structure and plucking the metal chords along the perimeter compresses sensors that will send electric currents that light up areas of the pavilion. The panels are clipped onto a structure of plywood ribs with polycarbonate struts. Apertures in the thick wall of the pavilion are lined with sheet metal to reflect light and color. Lights embedded in the apertures and in the edge of the projecting overhang will glow when the pavilion is touched, attracting the attention of passers-by especially on overcast days. Read the rest of this entry »